Table Of ContentLITHUANIAN IS TAUGHT IN THESE UNIVERSITIES:
T
In Lithuania: H E
Vilnius University, Lithuania (www.vu.lt)
Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania (www.vdu.lt)
Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania (www.ktu.lt)
L
Klaipëda University, Lithuania (www.ku.lt) I T H U A N I A N
Ðiauliai University, Lithuania (www.su.lt)
In other countries:
Univerzita Karlova v Praze, Czech Republic
Masarykova Univerzita, Brno, Czech Republic l a n g u a g e
Tartu Ülikool, Estonia
Helsingin Yliopisto, Finland
Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris, France
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
Ernst-Moritz-Arndt Universität-Greifswald, Germany
Westfalische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, Germany
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
T
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany R A D I T I O N S
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn, Germany
T
Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Germany A N D R E N D S
Universität Hamburg, Germany
Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy
Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy
Università degli Studi di Pisa, Italy
Latvijas Universitâte, Rîga, Latvia
Universitetet i Oslo, Norway
Uniwersytet Warszawski, Poland
Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu, Poland
Uniwersytet Jagielloñski, Kraków, Poland
Moscow Lomonosov State University, Russia
St Petersburg State University, Russia
Lunds Universitet, Sweden
Stockholms Universitet, Sweden
Universität Bern, Switzerland
University of Illinois at Chicago, U.S.A.
University of Washington, U.S.A.
Pennsylvania State University, U.S.A.
1 | THE LITHUANIAN LANGUAGE
THE LITHUANIAN LANGUAGE | 2
3 | THE LITHUANIAN LANGUAGE
T L
H E I T H U A N I A N
l a n g u a g e
T
R A D I T I O N S
T
A N D R E N D S
THE LITHUANIAN LANGUAGE | 4
THE LITHUANIAN LANGUAGE: TRADITIONS AND TRENDS
by Giedrius Subaèius
Special thanks to Vilnius University Library
This publication was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania
2nd Edition
© Giedrius Subaèius, 2005
© The Lithuanian Institute, 2005
ISBN 9955-548-09-6
5 | THE LITHUANIAN LANGUAGE
Drawing by Rimvydas Kepeþinskas
THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES
THE LITHUANIAN LANGUAGE | 6
D
ue to their similar political situations and historical development
in the 20th century, the three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania – are often treated as sisters, and referred to as Baltic
countries. This name is even applied to the entire region. But professional
linguists have always pointed out that this is not an appropriate designation.
The term Balt was coined in the 19th century by the German linguist Ferdinand
Nesselman to name one of the branches of the Indo-European languages
spoken on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. Linguists had already known
Indo-European groups such as Germanic, Romance and Slavic; now they
discovered another group of Indo-European languages, the Baltic languages.
Since then, in linguistics, the term has been applied only in reference to the
true Baltic languages: the living Lithuanian and Latvian languages, and
dead languages such as Curonian, Semigallian, Selonian, Jatvingian and
Galindian. Estonian is quite different: not only is it outside the Baltic group,
but it is not even an Indo-European language, for it belongs to the Finno-
Ugric group. Thus, when we hear the word Baltic, we should not forget that
for a linguist, and even for a Lithuanian, it may not include Estonian.
Lithuanians make up about 80 per cent of the population of Lithuania.
This means that more than three million people (perhaps three and a half
million) consider Lithuanian to be their mother tongue. It is spoken by the
autochthon Lithuanian populations in some border areas of Poland and
Belarus, and by numerous Lithuanian émigrés in other countries. The larg-
est émigré groups are to be found in the United States.
People have long been curious to know what makes languages similar,
and why people speak different languages in different countries. Linguistic
similarity could be evidence of a tribal or national affinity, or even prove
the place closest to God. For instance, during the Renaissance one similar-
ity theory held that Lithuanian was simply a debased Latin, and we know
that Latin was the most sacred language in the Catholic world. Genealogi-
cal studies of languages took on a scientific approach only in the 19th cen-
tury. Traditionally, it was based on the history of sounds: that is, it was a
history of the spoken language, which people learn in some mysterious way
in early childhood without any apparent effort, as if the sounds of the lan-
guage overwhelmed them like a swollen river.
Latvian is the only living language with sounds and endings similar to
those of Lithuanian, but a Latvian and a Lithuanian who do not speak each
7 | THE LITHUANIAN LANGUAGE
other’s tongue cannot communicate, unlike a Dane who can communicate
with a Norwegian, an Italian who can communicate with a Spaniard, or a
Ukrainian who can communicate with a Russian. A Lithuanian and a Latvian
can only recognise a few words in each other’s speech, and this is not enough
to hold a conversation. Therefore, we can say that Lithuanian is a language
which cannot be understood by a speaker of any other language who has not
learnt it. More than that, even users of different Lithuanian dialects (such
as Lowland and Highland Lithuanians) cannot understand each other un-
less they communicate in standard Lithuanian, which they have to learn.
Since the 19th century, when the similarity between Lithuanian and San-
skrit was discovered, Lithuanians have taken a particular pride in their
mother tongue as the oldest living Indo-European language. To this day, to
some Lithuanians their understanding of their nationality is based on their
linguistic identity. It is no surprise then that they proudly quote the French
linguist Antoine Meillet, who said that anyone who wanted to hear old Indo-
European should go and listen to a Lithuanian farmer. The 19th-century
maxim – the older the language the better – is still alive in Lithuania.
The history of sounds explains how the Lithuanian word sûnus and the
German Sohn, English son, and Polish syn are not loanwords from one lan-
guage to another, but have the same origin. The same is true of the Lithua-
nian duktë, German Tochter, English daughter, and Polish córka; or the
Lithuanian mënuo, English month, and German Monat. Although the lan-
guages are different now, their sounds testify to the fact that many centuries
ago the situation was quite different. The history of sounds addresses also
loanwords and their passage from one language to another. For example,
the German Rathaus, Polish ratusz, and Lithuanian rotuðë mean the same
because the Poles borrowed it from the Germans, and later the Lithuanians
borrowed it from the Poles.
This genealogical history of sounds is like a biological science: tracing
DNA sequences is like tracing and reconstructing sound sequences. Thus,
we can say that throughout the centuries, the changes in Lithuanian “DNA
sequences” have been less numerous than in other languages, and that is
the reason why it is considered to be a very old language.
The cultural and social history of language is different. It is more con-
cerned, for example, with why the languages of the neighbours German and
Polish have the letter w, while Lithuanian and Latvian do not; or why the
THE LITHUANIAN LANGUAGE | 8
letter y comes at the end of the German and Polish alphabets, while in the
Lithuanian alphabet it is in the first half, alongside the letters i and á; or
why the Italian equivalent of the Latin littera is lettera, the English is letter,
and the Polish litera; but the Germans use the word Buchstabe, the Latvians
burts, and the Lithuanians raidë. We can call this kind of linguistic history
the history of letters (in contrast to the history of sounds) or the history of
the written language. Writing has always been difficult to learn or teach, it
required schools, scriptoria, and grammars; it has never come naturally to a
person. In this respect, the sounds may seem to have a more privileged
status compared to the letters. But the letters are always more prestigious,
they give a certain power and exclusiveness to a person; while the sounds
are given to everybody naturally and in equal measure.
The social history of the Lithuanian language can be considered in the
context of its relations and contacts with other languages. For a number of
centuries, contacts were especially close with two living languages, Ger-
man and Polish (in addition to Latin and the East Slavic written languages).
Lithuanian has come into contact also with Yiddish, Russian and other
languages, but these contacts have left fewer traces.
Lithuanian culture in East Prussia was strongly influenced by German
culture. From the 16th century until the middle of the 20th century, East
Prussia produced a large number of Lithuanian books: translations of the
Bible, psalm books, grammars, dictionaries and primers, including the first
Lithuanian translation of the Bible (by Jonas Bretkûnas [Bretke] in around
1590–1602) and the first Lithuanian grammar (by Danielius Kleinas in
1653). In all of these activities, Lithuanian was in close contact with Ger-
man. The first Lithuanian manuscript of the Bible was mostly a transla-
tion of Luther’s translation; the second Lithuanian grammar was written
and published in German (in 1654); a large number of psalms in the 16th
century were translated from the German; and all or almost all of the bi-
lingual dictionaries (there were no monolingual Lithuanian dictionaries)
known since the 17th century were either German-Lithuanian or Lithua-
nian-German.
These contacts are evident in the application of German orthographic
rules to written Lithuanian in East Prussia, such as the double consonants
after a short vowel, as in stipprey (modern Lithuanian stipriai) and tikkray
(tikrai), the German letter w, and the Gothic (not Latin) alphabet.
9 | THE LITHUANIAN LANGUAGE
At the time that Lithuania formed a commonwealth (federation) with Po-
land (1569 to 1795) and when it was occupied by the Russian Empire
(1795 to 1914), the Lithuanian language in Lithuania proper was under the
influence of the Polish language. In the Middle Ages, Lithuanian dukes and
gentry spoke Lithuanian; but during the Renaissance they switched to Polish.
Gradually, Polish became the language of culture. It is for this reason that
nowadays Lithuanians sometimes take more pride in their older dukes, who
spoke Lithuanian, and cannot fully accept the later ones who could not. The
dominance of the Polish language meant the introduction and use of Polish
letters: the digraphs sz and cz for š and è respectively in modern Lithua-
nian, and the letters ñ, ù, ê, ý and ú.
At the end of the 19th century, however, neither of the two written tra-
ditions (Prussian or Polish) would form the foundations of modern stand-
ard Lithuanian. The national movement wanted to standardize the language
in such a way that it would be different from other languages in the area.
The Lithuanians rejected the Polish letter ù (why should it be used in
Lithuanian when it is not used in any other languages? they thought), re-
fused to accept the German and Polish w (the Latin v seemed quite suffi-
cient), and replaced cz and sz with the Czech è and ð (the argument was
that they were shorter). In the end, standard Lithuanian became estab-
lished in Lithuania; while in East Prussia the language has disappeared,
together with German, to give way to Russian in the newly emerged
Kaliningrad Region. Still, some elements of the writing from East Prussia
were transferred into standard Lithuanian, such as the letter ë, the use of
the letters i and y, and the majority of the case endings.
It is interesting that these letters became an integral part of the spelling
at the same time as the Lithuanian (or Latin) letters were prohibited by the
Russian authorities. The late development of standard Lithuanian has been
responsible for some of its modern features. For instance, à, æ, á, ø, ë, è, ð, þ,
û are relatively new additions to the Latin alphabet. Each has a different
story: à and æ (nasal vowels) were taken from Polish spelling by the first
Lithuanian writers during the Renaissance period; while á and ø were intro-
duced by the Lithuanians themselves by analogy. The coining of the graph-
eme ë can be attributed to Danielius Kleinas, the author of the first Lithuanian
grammar, printed in 1653; è, ð, and þ (with a diacritical mark) were bor-
rowed from Czech in the 19th century; while û, the youngest, which marked
